A legislative plan to give charter schools a
cut of local school districts’ construction money would steer millions
of additional dollars to large charter-school networks that are already
sitting on tens of millions of dollars in cash, records show.

The
charter-school industry is lobbying hard in the capital to gain a share
of tax dollars raised by school districts to cover the construction and
maintenance costs of traditional public schools — tax revenue that has
dropped dramatically in recent years with plummeting real-estate values.
Currently, school districts are not required to share these tax dollars
with charter schools.

School districts say the proposal could
cost them as much as $140 million a year statewide and cripple their
ability to repair aging school buildings and pay debts for past
construction. But charter school operators say the lesser funding for
their students is inherently unfair, and argue that withholding
construction money has stifled charter schools’ growth.

Earlier
this month, Doug Rodriguez, the principal of the Doral Academy
Preparatory Middle/High charter school, told a Senate committee that the
lack of construction money has “placed a cap on our school. We’re not
able to expand.”

But many charter schools, including Rodriguez’s,
routinely collect more tax dollars than they spend, and sock away the
unspent cash. The Doral Academy charter-school network, comprised of
five Miami-Dade schools, had net assets of $13.6 million last year, much
of it cash, records show.

The Doral Academy network is one of
four large South Florida charter-school chains run by Academica, the
state’s largest charter school operator. These four school networks —
the Doral, Mater, Somerset and Pinecrest academies — had combined assets
of more than $83 million last year, records show. This money is held by
nonprofit companies that own the schools, which are managed by
Academica, a for-profit company based in South Miami.

These
schools could stand to gain millions more every year from the
construction tax dollars, which would be distributed on a per-student
basis. For example, the Doral, Mater, Somerset and Pinecrest academies —
which now have 45 percent of all charter-school students in Miami-Dade
County — would receive an additional $14.5 million from the Miami-Dade
school district this year alone under the proposal.

Academica’s
schools aren’t the only ones with growing reserves. The Keys Gate
charter schools in Homestead, managed by Fort Lauderdale-based Charter
Schools USA, have about $5 million in cash reserves, and the nearby
Charter School at Waterstone, run by Charter School Associates, had $2.6
million in assets last year, most of it cash, records show.

Lynn
Norman Teck, spokeswoman for the Florida Consortium of Public Charter
Schools, said charters should not be cut out of construction funding
because some schools have managed to save money.
“Their reserves
are for a rainy day,” Teck said. “I don’t think it is fair to penalize a
group of charter schools for being financially savvy.”

Andreina
Figueroa, chairwoman of the Somerset Academy charter-school network,
said her schools put money away to safeguard against funding cuts. The
31 Somerset schools in Miami-Dade and Broward have more than 10,000
students and $25 million in assets, records show.

“We can’t
control what the Legislature does,” Figueroa said. “We need to know that
if the state of Florida cuts us, we can continue to educate our
students.”

In contrast, many smaller, independent charters don’t
have cash reserves, and struggle to pay for maintenance and construction
under the current financing rules, Teck said.

The proposed
legislation would allow charters to spend the new tax dollars on
construction and related expenses, and facility leases. Many South
Florida charters lease their school buildings from companies with ties
to their for-profit managers.

Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, a
sponsor of the proposal, said the issue is fairness: Under today’s
rules, charter schools receive less money per student than traditional
public schools. While some schools have large cash reserves, “the
mom-and-pops have nothing,” he said. “We’re going to make all the kids
equal.”

But opponents of the measure say it will mainly benefit
the large charter-school operators with high enrollment and robust
balance sheets.

“These are not the mom-and-pop charter schools
that are pushing for this. These are the big management companies,” said
Georgia Slack, a lobbyist for the Broward County School District.

At
the moment, the fate of the proposal remains uncertain. A Senate
education committee approved Wise’s bill. But the sponsor in the House
of Representatives was unable to tack on similar language to the House
version of the bill last week. Observers believe the provision will
resurface in a later draft.

Slack said the proposal would cost the
Broward school system at least $20 million a year. Miami-Dade officials
estimate that the funding change would cost $37 million in the next
school year, and $45 million the following year.

The school
districts say they can’t afford to lose the tax money, most of which
goes not to construction costs but to pay the debt on bonds. Nearly
one-third of Florida’s school districts use all of their construction
taxes to pay down debt.

The Miami-Dade School District is expected
to collect about $267 million next year through the tax, but $182
million of that would have to go toward paying off bonds — leaving only a
fraction for maintenance and construction. Overall, the capital budgets
of the Miami-Dade and Broward school districts have dropped more than
70 percent in the past five years, as sinking property values dragged
down tax revenues.

Maintenance needs, meanwhile, continue to
grow. Miami-Dade — where half the school buildings are more than four
decades old — has more than $1.7 billion in outstanding capital needs,
from air conditioners that need replacing to leaky pipes and electrical
upgrades.

The Broward school system, which has $1.8 billion in
capital needs, can’t buy new computers for classrooms, Slack said. “We
have stopped all cosmetic painting,” she told lawmakers.

Last
week, the Fitch bond-rating agency warned that diverting local tax money
to charters would put a significant strain on school districts — a hint
that school districts’ credit ratings could suffer as a result.

“We
need to slow the train down and look at the very serious implications
for charter schools and traditional public schools,” said Sen. Bill
Montford, D-Tallahassee, the bill’s most vocal opponent. Montford is
also the CEO of the Florida Association of School Superintendents. . . .